Hardware

Over the past decade, open source software has been one of the biggest catalysts in the tech world. Today, the power of open source, the freedom it enables, and the communities that it generates are gaining traction in the hardware world too. For these reasons, RISC-V is gaining huge popularity. Here is an introduction to RISC-V and the opportunities it opens.

Free is a good price, so the saying goes, so free, open source real time operating systems (RTOSs) might seem like a good deal. But they’re typically not worth the risks for developers of embedded and IoT devices such as home automation and wearable devices, medical instruments, and industrial control systems. Before you decide, make sure you understand the real costs and pitfalls of using an open source—rather than commercial—RTOS.

With my launch testing of the Raven Ridge desktop APUs with the Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G there were some stability issues to report and some hangs within games and mode-setting issues. It appears those issues are exacerbated with some motherboards: the past few days with two different AMD B350 motherboards have been a real pain getting the current AMDGPU driver stack working -- and even Linux 4.17 AMDGPU WIP code -- on either of these Raven Ridge APUs.

With GPU prices increasing exponentially over the past few months, it’s been hard to price out a PC. This particular build took us nearly a year to assemble; getting all the parts together was a challenge. (TK, our video producer, delivered the last piece of the puzzle after the Consumer Electronics Show in January.)

Our goal was to show what a decent budget can get you in an all-AMD build, and what kind of performance you can expect from it. Thanks to AMD Ryzen and Polaris, we were able to do just that.

One of the discussion items in the forums this week was about the video memory allowance for the Vega graphics on Raven Ridge APUs as well as efficiences or inefficiencies around the TTM memory manager as used by the AMDGPU kernel driver. Here are some vRAM size tests with the Ryzen 3 2200G.

A few months ago the new Video Game Console, Nintendo Switch, came onto the market. A console that revolutionized the gaming market thanks to its game modes… and its software. The Nintendo Console has been hacked and thanks to an exploit of the operating system, we can say that Nintendo Switch is capable of running Gnu/Linux.

Advantech is prepping a “SOM-5871” computer-on-module with an unannounced AMD V1000 Zen SoC, which appears to be AMD’s rumored, 14nm Ryzen Embedded V1000 “Great Horned Owl” successor to the R-Series. iBase also leaked info on a V1000 based Mini-ITX board and fanless PC.

In Part 2 of this series, I demonstrated loading and running the Things Gateway by Mozilla software onto a Raspberry Pi. I showed how to use a DIGI XStick, which implements the Zigbee protocol, to run a light bulb and smart plug.

The kit (which doesn’t include a Raspberry Pi) costs $189, and is available now. While that may seem like a pretty penny to make speakers wireless, it’s actually a steal, especially when you consider the fact that it features an integrated 4-channel amp in addition to a high-fidelity DAC. In fact, many project-oriented audio enthusiasts may start looking around for some older B&O models, just for the opportunity to try the project out.

Only months after debuting the Freedom U540, the world's first Linux-compatible processor based on the open-source RISC-V chip architecture, RISC-V chipmaker SiFive has surprised the open-source community again by unveiling a full development board built around the ISA.

Called the HiFive Unleashed, the new development board is built around SiFive's Freedom U540, which is based on the company's U54-MC Coreplex. The chip is a 64-bit, 4+1 multicore processor that fully supports Linux, as well as other operating systems such as FreeBSD and Unix. The development board itself features a 8GB of DDR4 with ECC, a gigabit ethernet port, 32 MB of quad SPI flash memory, a MicroSD card slot, and an FPGA mezzanine card (FMC) connector for allowing peripherals and other expansion devices to be attached to the board.

Digital transformation and the proliferation of big data are driving a renaissance in software development, requiring new advancements in hardware and processors. With a range of needs from a variety of users and platforms, standard instruction set architectures are no longer fulfilling all use cases as the demand for flexibility and improved performance increases.

“The world is dominated by two instruction set architectures. … Both are great, but … they’re owned by their respective companies. RISC-V is a third entrant into this world … it’s completely open source,” said Martin Fink (pictured, right), chief technology officer of Western Digital Corp. Through the RISC-V initiative, Fink and Dave Tang (pictured, left), senior vice president of corporate marketing at Western Digital, are working to provide an instruction set that can be freely shared to encourage innovation.

Contemporary Controls is launching a “BASpi” Raspberry Pi add-on that supports the BACnet building control standard and Sedona Framework, and provides 6x relay outputs and 6x inputs, including analog, temp, contact closure, pulse, and resistance inputs.

Home automation is a new phenomenon compared to more established building automation technology, which largely follows the BACnet (Building Automation Control network) standard. We have seen various Linux-ready IoT products that offer some BACnet support, including Echelon’s IzoT Router. However, Contemporary Controls’ new BASpi Raspberry Pi 3 add-on board is the first product we’ve seen that is specifically designed for the standard.

This is the third blog post in this series about creating your first robot with ROS and Ubuntu Core. In the previous post you were introduced to the Robot Operating System (ROS), and got your robot moving by ROSifying one of the CamJam worksheets. Today we're going to move beyond the CamJam worksheets, and work toward having our robot remotely controlled by focusing on our wireless controller: getting data out of it and into ROS messages.

Shenzhen based Taicenn Technology has launched a rugged industrial computer that runs Linux or Windows on an old school Intel Atom D2550 “Cedar Trail” processor with dual 1.86GHz cores, 640MHz Intel graphics, and a separate Intel NM10 controller chipset. The TBOX-4000’s D2550 chip has the advantage of being reasonably power efficient (10W TDP), leading to the computer’s under 20W total consumption. It’s also likely to make this computer more affordable than most, although no pricing was listed.

Mycroft is an industry first. Where Amazon Echo and Google Home are unsurprisingly closed-lipped about their data gathering, we know that recordings gathered from these devices are stored for later use (whatever that might be). Mycroft Mark II, by comparison, is an open source voice platform.

This means that users of the Mycroft platform can opt into sharing their usage data and designers can then use that data to learn more about demographics, language, and voice recognition.

On the other hand, users could choose to keep their data private.

What we know about Mycroft Mark II's hardware is that it has a Xilinx quad-core processor, specifically a Zynq UltraScale+ EG MPSoC. It has an array of six far-field PDM-based MEMs microphones and has hardware acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) for beamforming and noise reduction. It has stereo sound with dual 2" drivers (10 Watts), a 4" IPS LCD touchscreen, BT 2.1+EDR and BLE 4.2 Bluetooth In, and single-band Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz).

PocketSprite is a new tiny retro handheld games system, which has this week launched via the Crowd Supply crowdfunding website, and has already nearly raised its required $20,000 pledge goal. Thanks to over 380 backers with still 41 days remaining on its campaign. The tiny keychain PocketSprite games console comes pre-loaded with two emulators in the form of the GNUBoy and SMS Plus. Allowing you to play “every single game” from the Nintendo Game Boy, Nintendo Game Boy Color, Sega Master System and Sega Game Gear consoles.

These days, dipping into the nostalgia pool is a surefire way to grab the attention of retro preservationists and lovers of geeky gadgetry. Team Pocket’s chibi-sized emulator is a case in point. The PocketSprite, a diminutive, open source emulation device, accomodates your old-school cravings with a lineup of Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Gear and Sega Master System Games within a colour OLED display. It doesn’t make sacrifices on framerates, either; Sonic runs loop de loops at 60+ FPS in PocketSprite’s 5:4 aspect ratio.

Interestingly, the PocketSprite isn’t the only pocket-sized GameBoy out there. There’s a slew of competitors, including the PocketStar (which is also crowdfunding on Kickstarter), the Arduino-based 8-bit Arduboy, and the NES-copying BittBoy Mini handheld.

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Compact, rugged IoT gateway offers dual GbE with PoE

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